“Yes?” I say, forcing myself to take a step back from Dallas.
She blows me a kiss and then walks barefoot onto the lawn, toward the fountain where Poppet is leaping lithely around, water spraying into the air and glistening like little pebbles of frozen gold in the sunlight.
“We got them,” Gabriel says. “It was clean. What’d you want us to do with them?”
“Take them to the warehouse out of town,” I tell him. “You know the one.”
“Yeah, I do. And you?”
“I’ll fly a chopper over and join you. It’s time we showed Patty what happens when he crosses us.”
“What are we going to do, Skip?” Gabriel asks.
“Kill them,” I snarl. “Gabriel, I’m going to fucking kill them.”
Just like I knew it would, it gives Gabriel pause.
Chapter Sixteen
Dallas
I stand at the end of the garden feeling faintly ridiculous, as though I’m living inside a Victorian novel and I’m about to have a tête-à-tête.
I stand on the stone pathway with the world painted black, under the statue of the flying harpist just as Domenico instructed me to.
It all came in the form of a letter sealed in a velvet box, the precise details on what time I should bring myself here, the dog sitter who would care for Poppet, and who has won awards for her dog-sitting.
That was the hardest part about getting ready tonight, being apart from Poppet. I haven’t spent a moment away from her since the bomb, and I was nervous she’d be skittish and needy.
But when the dog sitter arrived, she calmed and even seemed to be nosing at me to go meet Domenico.
Come on, silly, she seemed to be chastising. Maybe things are complicated and maybe you’re shy but that’s the man of your dreams out there waiting for you.
I smile now, hugging my arms around myself, wearing the dress that Domenico selected for me. I knew that if I told him I wanted to choose my own clothes, of course, he wouldn’t have any concerns with that, but I wanted to wear what he chose.
I wanted – want, need – to please him.
Dad still doesn’t know, hence the secrecy, secrecy Dom wants to end.
Let’s just tell him.
I asked for a little more time, my anxiety flurrying every time I think about the inevitable showdown.
Mom will freak because it’s Domenico DeLuca, the criminal, and no daughter of hers is going to be attached to a criminal, no matter how wealthy he is, no matter how the daughter feels about him.
And Dad will freak because Dom is the man who swept him up off the streets and made something of him.
Dad’s never talked explicitly about his work in the mob. But over the years I’ve gotten good at asking veiled questions.
“Is work going okay, Dad?” I’ll ask, innocently, and Dad will answer as though he works in a security firm or something—culling the details, speaking in generalities.
“Dom saved my life,” he said one summer barbecue, just me and him and Poppet on his balcony, smoke waving in the hot air. “Without him, I would’ve ended up in prison or worse. He showed me the right path. He taught me right and wrong. We’re both orphans, you know that? You don’t want to ask him how his parents went, but you know full well how your grandparents died.”
My grandmother to cancer and my grandfather in a car accident.
And I know how his parents went. He told me. And I don’t judge him for what he did.
I rub my arms against the cold in the air, not a lot, but enough to make goosebumps rise on my flesh. I know that Dad isn’t staying at the estate tonight, so there’s no chance of him catching me out here, but even so, I feel a shiver move through me, as though I’m doing something illicit.
I don’t judge Dom, as maybe I should. Maybe I should ride a wave of righteousness and tell him that murder is wrong. That I don’t care how old he was. That I don’t care what the conditions were, or that the men he killed would probably go on to do so much worse.
But I can’t.
When I look at Dom, at his silver peppered hair and the hungry young wolf in his experienced eyes, I see a man who would look like a freaking magazine cover standing next to a fireplace with his family gathered all around him.
The Perfect Husband, the title would read, with his sweater outlining his goliath’s build.
He’s not cruel for the sake of it, he doesn’t kill aimlessly, for pleasure, only when he has to, to defend his family. Is there something wrong with me that I’m okay with that?
The perfect husband, a voice mutters drolly in my head. Don’t get ahead of yourself.
And then there’d be me, standing next to him …
Do I fit?
I feel myself being led down Insecurity Alley when the air starts to whisper from high in the star-laced sky. I look up, laughing at myself a little as I stare into the stars.
Hearing things?
Maybe I’m letting the darkness spook me.
But then the whisper gets louder and I follow its noise, spotting a shifting shadow-dragon fluttering across the sky from far away. The skyline out here, so far away from the city, is like a screensaver. I can track the dragon as it flaps its wings and gets closer and much, much louder …
And of course, it’s a freaking helicopter, turned into a silhouette in the dark, my writer’s mind taking over once again.
Too much fantasy.
It lands in the field across from me, blowing against me, the grass becoming flat all around it. I laugh and wait for the propellers to stop, cheeks blazing red and excitement pumping vitally through me.
I feel alive like I can’t remember feeling, like a character in an adventure book. It’s like everything that happens to other people and never me is finally happening now, right here.
This is my moment.
All of this
